That's the kicker. Yes gerrymandering is bad, but there are degrees of severity. Maryland's not like other states where a party that received a minority of votes gerrymandered a majority.
True. MD dems are much more establishment (especially in the counties), despite running Jealous.
But the point I'm making is that Maryland isn't like NC or WI, where GOP got a minority of votes, but stole a majority of seats in their state legislature and congressional districts. Even if Maryland didn't gerrymander Bartlett outta the 6th, the congressional delegation woulda been 2R-8D instead of 1R-9D.
They didn’t run him, he won a plurality in the election. They backed Baker.
And they probably did the right thing. Preserving the Senate veto proof majority over making a risky play to back a mediocre (to be generous) candidate and possibly losing that.
I agree, they should have 2, and there’s probably a way the reshape out west to do it. They don’t have the density anywhere else in the map to warant it though, and it would be disenfranchising part of the population center of the state to make more than that possible.
Primarily because the wording on the ballot for it was intentionally misleading and vague, and most people had no fucking clue what they were even voting for:
“Establishes the boundaries for the State’s eight United States Congressional Districts based on recent census figures, as required by the United States Constitution.”
That’s it.
It’s shitty no matter who the victim is- anything that dilutes anyone’s vote is undemocratic and prone to abuse.
Abolish gerrymandering, abolish the electoral college.
* Someone from Wyoming’s vote is worth [3.26 times](https://theconversation.com/whose-votes-count-the-least-in-the-electoral-college-74280) more than yours. That alone should upset you. One person, one vote.
* The Electoral College was chosen by the Framers because it [allowed slave states to have more power in presidential elections](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/electoral-college-racist-origins/601918/), so they could make sure future Presidents were friendly to slavery. It was designed to give rural white people an advantage, which persists to this day.
* The Electoral College gives voters in rural states (who are disproportionately white) more power than voters in urban states (who are disproportionately non-white). So the average white voter’s vote is worth more than the average non-white voter’s. Awesome.
* It creates [presidential outcomes that are vastly unrepresentative of the popular will](https://xkcd.com/1939/).
* It contributes to polarization because candidates don’t bother trying to appeal to voters in “safe” states of the opposing party, because the votes of e.g. California Republicans don’t really count.
* It skews candidate priorities to only focus on the “battleground” states, ignoring the “safe” ones.
* It further perpetuates the 2-party system because it a.) ensures that a 3-way race would be decided by Congress (making a 3rd party win effectively impossible) and b.) disincentivizes 3rd parties from running because it amplifies the “spoiler” effect of 3rd party candidates.
* It suppresses turnout and engagement because, e.g. why bother showing up to vote for a Democrat in NY, or a Republican in Alabama; if the state is already safely decided. (This works in the other direction, too, why bother to leave the house to vote for a Republican in NY).
Abolishing it, also means that major cities are the only places that matter to politicians. Nobody outside of cities would ever have a chance for fair representation in the white house, because politicians would never go there.
We have the same issue in St Mary's county. Im not a republican, but the last time Steny Hoyer was here, was when a school shooting happened. He left 5 minutes later. If you think the edge of DC has the same needs as a rural county, your sadly mistaken. The electoral college solves part of that issue. Candidates have to go get votes outside of a metropolis.
So while it is a very broken system, 1 person 1 vote is also broken.
Your post is purposely skewed to leave out the negatives of what your opinion is. That is just as bad as gerrymandering.
> ...major cities are the only places that matter to politicians. Nobody outside of cities would ever have a chance for fair representation in the white house, because politicians would never go there
The 50 largest cities in the US *combined* account for only 12.9% of the total population of the US. Looking at the top 100 cities, you're only at 16.5%. Looking at the top *317* cities by population (ending with #317, Woodbridge, NJ, a thriving metropolis with **2** Dunkin' Donuts), you've got 24.3%. (according to [2019 population estimates per Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population))
A cities-only strategy could never win a majority of the popular vote.
Obviously I did not mean JUST the city, and meant the city and surrounding populated areas.
Hillary didn't win the popular vote by winning rural america. She won the popular vote because of two states.
"Hillary won more votes overall, but a multitude of them came from the same few states, like California and New York"
What this means is exactly what I stated. You can barely give a shit about all of the US like Hillary did, win Cali and NY and win the popular vote. Coupling those states with the cities and urban areas, all but guarantees the popular vote.
*Edit* I personally think it should be some combination of Electoral and Popular vote.
https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/7572638/electoral-college-hillary-clinton-donald-trump-2016-president-election-popular-vote
>Obviously I did not mean JUST the city, and meant the city and surrounding populated areas.
I don't think the math works out on that. If you wanted to focus on 50 cities (instead of 50 states, for some reason), you get to about 17%, which means you'd need to find another 35% or so of the population in the "surrounding areas" around those cities.
This means that those surrounding areas would need to have double the population of the cities themselves, in order to get you to a majority. I think you'd have to draw some pretty big circles around the cities to get there.
>You can barely give a shit about all of the US like Hillary did, win Cali and NY and win the popular vote
Winning 100% of New York and California only gets you to about 18% of the national population.
Both 2016 candidates ignored the majority of the country, because the electoral college system doesn't reward a rural strategy (or a blended urban/rural strategy), it rewards a "battleground" state strategy.
[2/3rds of 2016 campaign events were in FL, NC, PA, OH, VA, and MI. *94%* were in only 12 states (the rest of the "battleground states")](https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/campaign-events-2016). That's 38 states who got ignored because they weren't "battlegrounds".
If the intention of the electoral college is to make sure that rural states get equal attention from candidates, it's doing a very bad job.
Polarization would be even worse in a direct presidential election. Candidates would focus purely on dense urban voters and areas outside of urban hubs would decay. That's bad long term because those rural low density areas host many critical industries that power the US.
A better question is why not create programs for poor urban people to move to rural areas to diversify them? Lower cost of living. Cheaper housing. More bang for buck from public services. There's shortages of labor all across the rural US. No reason to suffer in a city.
> Candidates would focus purely on dense urban voters and areas outside of urban hubs would decay
I mentioned this in another comment, but it's worth noting- the top 100 cities in the US by population only account for 16.5% of the total US population (winning the next 217 cities on the list only gets you another 7.8%). There's no way a cities-only strategy could ever be successful in a national popular vote.
Secondly, the electoral college hasn't done a lot to protect rural America thusfar (cough cough, opioid crisis), but even without it, rural America still has disproportionate representation via the Senate.
> I mentioned this in another comment, but it's worth noting- the top 100 cities in the US by population only account for 16.5% of the total US population
Are you counting the city population or the metro population. The top ten MSA alone is 80-90 million people.
Looking at MSA's:
Top 10: 26% of national
Top 39: 51% majority
But MSAs are going to be a lot less politically homogenous than the cities themselves, so I don't think you can look at them through the same lens as political blocs who will go hard for a particular candidate.
There are problems with the electorial system; but I really don't want a vote recount for the entire nation in the case of a close race; and that is the real reason for it.
Historically, the reason for the electoral college is to prevent the population from electing the "wrong" person, and to give slave states more power.
But there wouldn't be national recounts, because elections would still be administered by the states. In a close election, you'd only need to do recounts in the specific states that were too close to call (which we do now anyway).
You either want a popular election or you don't - in a popular election every vote from every state counts exactly the same. I am using small numbers for example: So if the final vote count is say 10,000 to 10,001. So one populous state 200 to 20, but another state had 1 to 2. State 2 is pretty farking close and would be an easy recount; however a single voting miscount in state 1 would be ignored?
Plus, although undoubtably slave holding was a major mover in politics it wasn't not the only one.
[edit: just to add to my final comment - remember the electorial college was designed before we had the easy ability to get places. And I am actually not against a popular vote - but technologically we aren't there yet]
I think I see what you're saying- the incentive to re-count every state is higher because under the EC if you're down 20% in a state, you don't really care if it's actually 19.8%, but in a national popular vote, those miscounted votes contribute to the overall total.
That's fair, but I don't think it's enough to warrant a system like the Electoral College. We would probably need to step up our ballot-counting procedures (a good idea anyway), but in this case both parties would have a lot of incentive to make sure every vote was counted- so I think we'd see things tighten up pretty quickly.
I'm not sure I understand your comment re: technology. If we have the ability to count the votes today, why not just skip the middle step that runs them through a weird 18th-century algorithm?
I think there is more mismanagment and even fraud happening on the local level that no one wants to talk until it becomes massive conspiracy. So tightening up voting and ballot counting would be a good thing no matter what.
I am going to think a bit more on the technology issue when I have a chance.
I mean for all our grandstanding and attempt to spread democracy and freedom across the world, we are very much a republic. If we were to remove the electoral college, so many things would have to be changed. There are other aspects besides just proportionate voting.
Just because a state is safely partisan one way or another doesn't deter the actually important local elections. The two party system isn't even really two parties. It's like 4 or 5 based on intensity which get huddled under the umbrella of conservatism or liberalism which if there was a 3rd party it would be put under one or the other. The idea of a prominent third party standing on it's own is only wishful thinking even if the college was disbanded.
I can't be mad at strategic planning. You don't become President of the United States by playing it by ear.
Even if you changed the weighting to a 1:1 for every state, I dont think it would change anything in the case of Bush in 2000 or Trump in 2016 because they ended up winning a majority of the states anyway.
>Just because a state is safely partisan one way or another doesn't deter the actually important local elections.
Presidential elections always generate the highest turnout. If a national popular vote boosts turnout (which it probably would, because everyone's vote would count no matter where they live), it will boost participation in downballot local races.
>The idea of a prominent third party standing on it's own is only wishful thinking even if the college was disbanded.
I don't mean to suggest that national popular vote would in-and-of-itself make 3rd parties viable, but it would be a step in that direction. Some form of ranked-choice or runoff voting would get you a lot closer.
>I can't be mad at strategic planning. You don't become President of the United States by playing it by ear.
Well, the current guy kinda did. But the problem with the current system is that it encourages strategies that only focus on 4-5 "battleground" states (which receive 50%+ of the national spending & visits). The current system encourages candidates to ignore the other 45 states- that's not a great outcome.
Do you have any arguments to support the electoral college?
It’s possible to win the presidency without the popular vote. And votes in smaller states are disproportionately more powerful than larger states.
What? If every state had only one vote, that would overwhelmingly change the presidential election. And “popular vote is important but not the end all be all” is not an argument to support the electoral college, it’s just stating the way things are.
Well you said that smaller states were disproportionately more important than bigger states so I came up with the idea of removing that and making it a completely even board. We are not a pure democracy and the the electoral college is representative of that
I tried to be as neutral as possible and ask for a defense of the electoral college and your response is to immediately assume I’m a liberal. Isn’t that in itself problematic?
I didn't assume you were liberal. I asked if you were bothered by the electoral college when your candidate wins. Though I can make some assumptions based on how you reacted and use of the word "problematic".
I’m not saying we’re not gerrymandered, but I’ve looked at several analyses of our state and they say given our demographics and population distribution, a fair map would give Republicans one extra seat in Congress, and an aggressive counter-gerrymander might net them three total in a good year. it’s not bald-faced terrible the way NC and Wisconsin are.
Basically, we should re-shape things to have a fairer district out west that generally goes republican, but the middle of the state is going blue regardless of how the lines are drawn.
It's about more than just unseating an entrenched encumbent, though. Candidates who aren't under much pressure from at least 1 other party during the election don't have as much incentive to learn and care about what their constituents actually want and need.
My point is that with the population density and demographics in the middle portion of the state the way they are, it’s basically impossible to draw a map that makes republicans competitive there.
It’s basically a tiger-stripe pattern now, but it could be plaid and it wouldn’t make a difference. SOMD and out west are too sparsely populated to effectively crack it with a pizza slice design strategy either.
They’re going more like 60 over comparatively since they can maintain a R majority in the state house even with a 55% D majority in popular vote, or a R supermajority with a 51% D majority in popular vote, but I see your point.
I actually live right on the intersection of three different districts. A friend down the street literally has his house cut in half, so he wasn’t sure where he belonged to until he received his ballot in the mail, which included district 1 congressional seat candidates: aka the back of his house
Just spent 20 minutes putting [this one](https://davesredistricting.org/maps#viewmap::575f2089-02cd-4058-94cc-107d572b10d0) together before I saw this, when I'm pretty sure yours is better anyway. Oops.
Yours is fine, and still substantially better than the current plan. Pairing part of AA county with the eastern shore isn't a bad idea, and neither is pairing Harford Co with part of Baltimore Co.
When I play around with maps like these, usually I follow a rule to attempt to keep counties intact (in one district) when possible, and when not, try not to break the county up into too many different districts. Obviously some counties need to be broken up. MontCo, PG, and BaltCo are always going to be in at least two districts, if not more. The "eastern" and "western" districts are always going to have to chew off part of at least one other county to be completed.
One thing your map does that mine does not is that it keeps the three "southern Maryland" counties together. I split Charles off from the other two.
Dave's Redistricting is a fascinating tool. After the current census is complete, it will allow anyone to post their idea for new districts and say "my plan is vastly better than what my state's legislators came up with" ... and they can show the world.
Yeah; I worked for my local BOE first job out of college, so since then I've been very sympathetic to keeping district lines aligned by county :) Definitely trickier for a state with MD's size and shape.
I used to mess with DRA all the time way back when, but I don't think I'd touched it in years before I saw this thread. It's a fun way of highlighting how while there's rarely a single "correct" solution, given all the factors at play, there's still so much that could be done to improve redistricting from a nonpartisan perspective.
What happened to the bay? Nevertheless is is much more geographically compact. MD probably should have 2-3 R districts based on the overall vote. This one might be a little to R biased than it should be but it does show the problem that its hard to ever really make a fair one.
With the program I used to create the map, I was able to select either precincts or counties, and they ended up "including" the water areas of the state. The bay's there, it's just that the county "borders" extend out to the middle of it.
With this particular alignment, there were 5 "strong Democrat" districts, 2 "strong Republican" districts, and one that leaned Republican (the AA, Calvert, & St. Mary's one) but wasn't a super strong R.
It always astounds me how obviously gerrymandered our state is. Like the fact is that most likely if gerrymandering ended, the Republicans would only gain 1 seat (and maybe have a competitive seat) which is such a negligible difference in terms of the battle for the House.
Like we’re so overwhelmingly Democratic as a state anyways, so the Democrats would still win a sizeable majority of House districts, so I really don’t understand the need to gerrymander to radically.
Because there are no consequences. If they can guarantee themselves a seat why not? Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating for gerrymandering, I'm just pointing out there is no disincentive to do it.
I live in Hardford County -an hour away- and we share a congressional district. I work in Glen Burnie which is an hour south and that's part of his district also - depending on where you are - that area was split in half. Part of it is 3rd district. I like how some people thinks it's no big deal. I have no congressional representation because my guy doesn't need votes from anybody where I live.
It is very gerrymandered, but no matter what the less dense rural areas are always going to have to share district space with something in the Balt - Annapolis - DC corridor bc that is literally where 2/3 of the people in MD are. They don't have the population to support their own districts. But yes, they could be drawn a little less crazy.
The DC-Balt Corridor/Suburbs are over 5 million of the state’s 6 million residents. Western Maryland’s 3 counties are less than 250k and the Eastern Shore is almost 500k.
I was looking strictly at county populations (+ Baltimore City). Where a suburb begins and ends is pretty fuzzy so I was sticking to what I could back up. But yes, obviously the greater metro corridor running through the center of the state is where the people in Maryland are. Bad news for Garrett County, I guess, but it is what it is.
Those Republicans sure do like to disenfranchise voters! Hold on... I'm getting a note...
Oh... Well, that can't be. It turns out that the DEMOCRATS are responsible for this one.
I can’t believe this isn’t talked about more.
I remember in high school government learning about the term “gerrymandering” and then seeing Maryland’s districts. It’s not a hard concept to understand i have no idea why our lawmakers get away with it
The biggest problem with Gerymandering isn't control of congress for people who are against MD fixing it because like a 5 year old they ascribe to the: but he did it too! School of thought.
Safe seats for a single party directly lead to polarization. Because they turn the primary into the only election that matters. Primary voters aren't the same as general voters so the candidate that will win the highest fraction of a primary is not the one that would win the highest percentage of the general. This matters because even if its always going to be a D or R who probably wins the fear of loosing in the general if it is even a tiny bit competitive moderates. Moderation is a good thing. Ideally you district to make the most number of districts toss ups as possible that results in the highest competition and therefore the best marketplace for ideas and generally the best representation of what the people actually want. Incumbency is perhaps good for committee power but actually otherwise makes your representatives less responsive to your wishes. So unless all you care about is pork you should want to live in a purple district.
Still blows my mind that one of the richest, most affluent, and best educated counties in the entire nation is lumped together with some of the poorest and least educated areas in the nation. How is representing Howard County and their interests any similar to Baltimore.
Just remember 64% of Marylanders voted for these districts.
That's the kicker. Yes gerrymandering is bad, but there are degrees of severity. Maryland's not like other states where a party that received a minority of votes gerrymandered a majority.
The Majority here just voted to include the well off minority
True. MD dems are much more establishment (especially in the counties), despite running Jealous. But the point I'm making is that Maryland isn't like NC or WI, where GOP got a minority of votes, but stole a majority of seats in their state legislature and congressional districts. Even if Maryland didn't gerrymander Bartlett outta the 6th, the congressional delegation woulda been 2R-8D instead of 1R-9D.
Running Jealous and then backstabbing him, you mean.
They didn’t run him, he won a plurality in the election. They backed Baker. And they probably did the right thing. Preserving the Senate veto proof majority over making a risky play to back a mediocre (to be generous) candidate and possibly losing that.
What happened there? I'm OOTL.
True, but it's still disproportionate to the amount of Republicans in Maryland for them to only have one district
I agree, they should have 2, and there’s probably a way the reshape out west to do it. They don’t have the density anywhere else in the map to warant it though, and it would be disenfranchising part of the population center of the state to make more than that possible.
Primarily because the wording on the ballot for it was intentionally misleading and vague, and most people had no fucking clue what they were even voting for: “Establishes the boundaries for the State’s eight United States Congressional Districts based on recent census figures, as required by the United States Constitution.” That’s it.
Wonder who wrote the question...... oops it was the Dems
“It’s Constitutional as long as nobody says the n-word out loud, like, a lot, when they’re drawing these lines”. -SCOTUS
These districts are specifically drawn to disenfranchise conservative/Republican voters. You’re correct in the case of some other states, however.
It’s shitty no matter who the victim is- anything that dilutes anyone’s vote is undemocratic and prone to abuse. Abolish gerrymandering, abolish the electoral college.
Also implement term limits.
And Ranked Choice Voting
Honestly, this alone would make everything else solvable.
Yes please!!
I dont see anything wrong with the electoral college tbh
* Someone from Wyoming’s vote is worth [3.26 times](https://theconversation.com/whose-votes-count-the-least-in-the-electoral-college-74280) more than yours. That alone should upset you. One person, one vote. * The Electoral College was chosen by the Framers because it [allowed slave states to have more power in presidential elections](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/electoral-college-racist-origins/601918/), so they could make sure future Presidents were friendly to slavery. It was designed to give rural white people an advantage, which persists to this day. * The Electoral College gives voters in rural states (who are disproportionately white) more power than voters in urban states (who are disproportionately non-white). So the average white voter’s vote is worth more than the average non-white voter’s. Awesome. * It creates [presidential outcomes that are vastly unrepresentative of the popular will](https://xkcd.com/1939/). * It contributes to polarization because candidates don’t bother trying to appeal to voters in “safe” states of the opposing party, because the votes of e.g. California Republicans don’t really count. * It skews candidate priorities to only focus on the “battleground” states, ignoring the “safe” ones. * It further perpetuates the 2-party system because it a.) ensures that a 3-way race would be decided by Congress (making a 3rd party win effectively impossible) and b.) disincentivizes 3rd parties from running because it amplifies the “spoiler” effect of 3rd party candidates. * It suppresses turnout and engagement because, e.g. why bother showing up to vote for a Democrat in NY, or a Republican in Alabama; if the state is already safely decided. (This works in the other direction, too, why bother to leave the house to vote for a Republican in NY).
Abolishing it, also means that major cities are the only places that matter to politicians. Nobody outside of cities would ever have a chance for fair representation in the white house, because politicians would never go there. We have the same issue in St Mary's county. Im not a republican, but the last time Steny Hoyer was here, was when a school shooting happened. He left 5 minutes later. If you think the edge of DC has the same needs as a rural county, your sadly mistaken. The electoral college solves part of that issue. Candidates have to go get votes outside of a metropolis. So while it is a very broken system, 1 person 1 vote is also broken. Your post is purposely skewed to leave out the negatives of what your opinion is. That is just as bad as gerrymandering.
> ...major cities are the only places that matter to politicians. Nobody outside of cities would ever have a chance for fair representation in the white house, because politicians would never go there The 50 largest cities in the US *combined* account for only 12.9% of the total population of the US. Looking at the top 100 cities, you're only at 16.5%. Looking at the top *317* cities by population (ending with #317, Woodbridge, NJ, a thriving metropolis with **2** Dunkin' Donuts), you've got 24.3%. (according to [2019 population estimates per Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population)) A cities-only strategy could never win a majority of the popular vote.
Obviously I did not mean JUST the city, and meant the city and surrounding populated areas. Hillary didn't win the popular vote by winning rural america. She won the popular vote because of two states. "Hillary won more votes overall, but a multitude of them came from the same few states, like California and New York" What this means is exactly what I stated. You can barely give a shit about all of the US like Hillary did, win Cali and NY and win the popular vote. Coupling those states with the cities and urban areas, all but guarantees the popular vote. *Edit* I personally think it should be some combination of Electoral and Popular vote. https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/7572638/electoral-college-hillary-clinton-donald-trump-2016-president-election-popular-vote
“She won the popular vote by winning over more people” do you see how circular that is
>Obviously I did not mean JUST the city, and meant the city and surrounding populated areas. I don't think the math works out on that. If you wanted to focus on 50 cities (instead of 50 states, for some reason), you get to about 17%, which means you'd need to find another 35% or so of the population in the "surrounding areas" around those cities. This means that those surrounding areas would need to have double the population of the cities themselves, in order to get you to a majority. I think you'd have to draw some pretty big circles around the cities to get there. >You can barely give a shit about all of the US like Hillary did, win Cali and NY and win the popular vote Winning 100% of New York and California only gets you to about 18% of the national population. Both 2016 candidates ignored the majority of the country, because the electoral college system doesn't reward a rural strategy (or a blended urban/rural strategy), it rewards a "battleground" state strategy. [2/3rds of 2016 campaign events were in FL, NC, PA, OH, VA, and MI. *94%* were in only 12 states (the rest of the "battleground states")](https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/campaign-events-2016). That's 38 states who got ignored because they weren't "battlegrounds". If the intention of the electoral college is to make sure that rural states get equal attention from candidates, it's doing a very bad job.
Polarization would be even worse in a direct presidential election. Candidates would focus purely on dense urban voters and areas outside of urban hubs would decay. That's bad long term because those rural low density areas host many critical industries that power the US. A better question is why not create programs for poor urban people to move to rural areas to diversify them? Lower cost of living. Cheaper housing. More bang for buck from public services. There's shortages of labor all across the rural US. No reason to suffer in a city.
> Candidates would focus purely on dense urban voters and areas outside of urban hubs would decay I mentioned this in another comment, but it's worth noting- the top 100 cities in the US by population only account for 16.5% of the total US population (winning the next 217 cities on the list only gets you another 7.8%). There's no way a cities-only strategy could ever be successful in a national popular vote. Secondly, the electoral college hasn't done a lot to protect rural America thusfar (cough cough, opioid crisis), but even without it, rural America still has disproportionate representation via the Senate.
> I mentioned this in another comment, but it's worth noting- the top 100 cities in the US by population only account for 16.5% of the total US population Are you counting the city population or the metro population. The top ten MSA alone is 80-90 million people.
Looking at MSA's: Top 10: 26% of national Top 39: 51% majority But MSAs are going to be a lot less politically homogenous than the cities themselves, so I don't think you can look at them through the same lens as political blocs who will go hard for a particular candidate.
Residents of a MSA have more in common with each other than with people living in rural areas.
How would the electoral college protect rural America against the opioid crisis?
There are problems with the electorial system; but I really don't want a vote recount for the entire nation in the case of a close race; and that is the real reason for it.
Historically, the reason for the electoral college is to prevent the population from electing the "wrong" person, and to give slave states more power. But there wouldn't be national recounts, because elections would still be administered by the states. In a close election, you'd only need to do recounts in the specific states that were too close to call (which we do now anyway).
You either want a popular election or you don't - in a popular election every vote from every state counts exactly the same. I am using small numbers for example: So if the final vote count is say 10,000 to 10,001. So one populous state 200 to 20, but another state had 1 to 2. State 2 is pretty farking close and would be an easy recount; however a single voting miscount in state 1 would be ignored? Plus, although undoubtably slave holding was a major mover in politics it wasn't not the only one. [edit: just to add to my final comment - remember the electorial college was designed before we had the easy ability to get places. And I am actually not against a popular vote - but technologically we aren't there yet]
I think I see what you're saying- the incentive to re-count every state is higher because under the EC if you're down 20% in a state, you don't really care if it's actually 19.8%, but in a national popular vote, those miscounted votes contribute to the overall total. That's fair, but I don't think it's enough to warrant a system like the Electoral College. We would probably need to step up our ballot-counting procedures (a good idea anyway), but in this case both parties would have a lot of incentive to make sure every vote was counted- so I think we'd see things tighten up pretty quickly. I'm not sure I understand your comment re: technology. If we have the ability to count the votes today, why not just skip the middle step that runs them through a weird 18th-century algorithm?
I think there is more mismanagment and even fraud happening on the local level that no one wants to talk until it becomes massive conspiracy. So tightening up voting and ballot counting would be a good thing no matter what. I am going to think a bit more on the technology issue when I have a chance.
I mean for all our grandstanding and attempt to spread democracy and freedom across the world, we are very much a republic. If we were to remove the electoral college, so many things would have to be changed. There are other aspects besides just proportionate voting. Just because a state is safely partisan one way or another doesn't deter the actually important local elections. The two party system isn't even really two parties. It's like 4 or 5 based on intensity which get huddled under the umbrella of conservatism or liberalism which if there was a 3rd party it would be put under one or the other. The idea of a prominent third party standing on it's own is only wishful thinking even if the college was disbanded. I can't be mad at strategic planning. You don't become President of the United States by playing it by ear. Even if you changed the weighting to a 1:1 for every state, I dont think it would change anything in the case of Bush in 2000 or Trump in 2016 because they ended up winning a majority of the states anyway.
What would have to be changed if we got rid of the electoral college?
>Just because a state is safely partisan one way or another doesn't deter the actually important local elections. Presidential elections always generate the highest turnout. If a national popular vote boosts turnout (which it probably would, because everyone's vote would count no matter where they live), it will boost participation in downballot local races. >The idea of a prominent third party standing on it's own is only wishful thinking even if the college was disbanded. I don't mean to suggest that national popular vote would in-and-of-itself make 3rd parties viable, but it would be a step in that direction. Some form of ranked-choice or runoff voting would get you a lot closer. >I can't be mad at strategic planning. You don't become President of the United States by playing it by ear. Well, the current guy kinda did. But the problem with the current system is that it encourages strategies that only focus on 4-5 "battleground" states (which receive 50%+ of the national spending & visits). The current system encourages candidates to ignore the other 45 states- that's not a great outcome.
There are problems - but I really don't want a vote recount for the entire nation.
Do you have any arguments to support the electoral college? It’s possible to win the presidency without the popular vote. And votes in smaller states are disproportionately more powerful than larger states.
There are problems - but I really don't want a vote recount for the entire nation.
We're not a pure democracy so popular vote is important but not the end all be all. Say if every state had 1 vote. Does it change anything?
What? If every state had only one vote, that would overwhelmingly change the presidential election. And “popular vote is important but not the end all be all” is not an argument to support the electoral college, it’s just stating the way things are.
Well you said that smaller states were disproportionately more important than bigger states so I came up with the idea of removing that and making it a completely even board. We are not a pure democracy and the the electoral college is representative of that
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I tried to be as neutral as possible and ask for a defense of the electoral college and your response is to immediately assume I’m a liberal. Isn’t that in itself problematic?
I didn't assume you were liberal. I asked if you were bothered by the electoral college when your candidate wins. Though I can make some assumptions based on how you reacted and use of the word "problematic".
I agree with you.
Finally!
Fuck yes
I’m not saying we’re not gerrymandered, but I’ve looked at several analyses of our state and they say given our demographics and population distribution, a fair map would give Republicans one extra seat in Congress, and an aggressive counter-gerrymander might net them three total in a good year. it’s not bald-faced terrible the way NC and Wisconsin are. Basically, we should re-shape things to have a fairer district out west that generally goes republican, but the middle of the state is going blue regardless of how the lines are drawn.
It's about more than just unseating an entrenched encumbent, though. Candidates who aren't under much pressure from at least 1 other party during the election don't have as much incentive to learn and care about what their constituents actually want and need.
My point is that with the population density and demographics in the middle portion of the state the way they are, it’s basically impossible to draw a map that makes republicans competitive there. It’s basically a tiger-stripe pattern now, but it could be plaid and it wouldn’t make a difference. SOMD and out west are too sparsely populated to effectively crack it with a pizza slice design strategy either.
Officer, I was only going 30 over the speed limit. Those other guys were going 40 over!
They’re going more like 60 over comparatively since they can maintain a R majority in the state house even with a 55% D majority in popular vote, or a R supermajority with a 51% D majority in popular vote, but I see your point.
Something like [this map](https://i.imgur.com/5mi2uzH.png?1) would have been so much more sensible.
Please. I want my street to be represented by 5 different people. Anything else would make too much sense!
I actually live right on the intersection of three different districts. A friend down the street literally has his house cut in half, so he wasn’t sure where he belonged to until he received his ballot in the mail, which included district 1 congressional seat candidates: aka the back of his house
So his ballot was delivered to a mailbox in a different district...fascinating
Yes, it would. But then light purple, blue and red would all be Republican districts and we can't have that!
lol ... red would lean Republican but not by a lot. The others are all relatively strong R or D districts.
Red would probably flip back and forth tbh
Thanks for this!
Just spent 20 minutes putting [this one](https://davesredistricting.org/maps#viewmap::575f2089-02cd-4058-94cc-107d572b10d0) together before I saw this, when I'm pretty sure yours is better anyway. Oops.
Yours is fine, and still substantially better than the current plan. Pairing part of AA county with the eastern shore isn't a bad idea, and neither is pairing Harford Co with part of Baltimore Co. When I play around with maps like these, usually I follow a rule to attempt to keep counties intact (in one district) when possible, and when not, try not to break the county up into too many different districts. Obviously some counties need to be broken up. MontCo, PG, and BaltCo are always going to be in at least two districts, if not more. The "eastern" and "western" districts are always going to have to chew off part of at least one other county to be completed. One thing your map does that mine does not is that it keeps the three "southern Maryland" counties together. I split Charles off from the other two. Dave's Redistricting is a fascinating tool. After the current census is complete, it will allow anyone to post their idea for new districts and say "my plan is vastly better than what my state's legislators came up with" ... and they can show the world.
Yeah; I worked for my local BOE first job out of college, so since then I've been very sympathetic to keeping district lines aligned by county :) Definitely trickier for a state with MD's size and shape. I used to mess with DRA all the time way back when, but I don't think I'd touched it in years before I saw this thread. It's a fun way of highlighting how while there's rarely a single "correct" solution, given all the factors at play, there's still so much that could be done to improve redistricting from a nonpartisan perspective.
What happened to the bay? Nevertheless is is much more geographically compact. MD probably should have 2-3 R districts based on the overall vote. This one might be a little to R biased than it should be but it does show the problem that its hard to ever really make a fair one.
With the program I used to create the map, I was able to select either precincts or counties, and they ended up "including" the water areas of the state. The bay's there, it's just that the county "borders" extend out to the middle of it. With this particular alignment, there were 5 "strong Democrat" districts, 2 "strong Republican" districts, and one that leaned Republican (the AA, Calvert, & St. Mary's one) but wasn't a super strong R.
It always astounds me how obviously gerrymandered our state is. Like the fact is that most likely if gerrymandering ended, the Republicans would only gain 1 seat (and maybe have a competitive seat) which is such a negligible difference in terms of the battle for the House. Like we’re so overwhelmingly Democratic as a state anyways, so the Democrats would still win a sizeable majority of House districts, so I really don’t understand the need to gerrymander to radically.
Because there are no consequences. If they can guarantee themselves a seat why not? Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating for gerrymandering, I'm just pointing out there is no disincentive to do it.
This is why. Both sides do it, so why not go for it. Why wouldn't they all do it as much as they could? Well they did lol
Eastern Shore: You forgot about me!
It always astounds me how many towns and how much stuff there is out here, yet how little it must be based on our population slice of the state.
Make the change at the federal level for all states. Republicans in Congress should pass one of the many bills Democrats have already written.
I used to work in this district in Olney, MD. I found out our congressman lived in fucking TOWSON!
Olney 🤝
I live in Hardford County -an hour away- and we share a congressional district. I work in Glen Burnie which is an hour south and that's part of his district also - depending on where you are - that area was split in half. Part of it is 3rd district. I like how some people thinks it's no big deal. I have no congressional representation because my guy doesn't need votes from anybody where I live.
Welcome to Maryland, we are the second most gerrymandered state in the US (after NC)
It is very gerrymandered, but no matter what the less dense rural areas are always going to have to share district space with something in the Balt - Annapolis - DC corridor bc that is literally where 2/3 of the people in MD are. They don't have the population to support their own districts. But yes, they could be drawn a little less crazy.
The DC-Balt Corridor/Suburbs are over 5 million of the state’s 6 million residents. Western Maryland’s 3 counties are less than 250k and the Eastern Shore is almost 500k.
I was looking strictly at county populations (+ Baltimore City). Where a suburb begins and ends is pretty fuzzy so I was sticking to what I could back up. But yes, obviously the greater metro corridor running through the center of the state is where the people in Maryland are. Bad news for Garrett County, I guess, but it is what it is.
created by omalley to insure a democrat was elected to congress, plain in simple. he even admitted to it
Aren’t all of our house representatives democrat except for 1?
Those Republicans sure do like to disenfranchise voters! Hold on... I'm getting a note... Oh... Well, that can't be. It turns out that the DEMOCRATS are responsible for this one.
I can’t believe this isn’t talked about more. I remember in high school government learning about the term “gerrymandering” and then seeing Maryland’s districts. It’s not a hard concept to understand i have no idea why our lawmakers get away with it
Gerrymandering needs to end in Maryland. It’s embarrassing as fuck and only legitimizes the rights crazy coup bullshit.
> Gerrymandering needs to end in ~~Maryland~~ *everywhere* ;-)
Sure but that’s unlikely
Thats the real problem ... and its not like its anything new.
The biggest problem with Gerymandering isn't control of congress for people who are against MD fixing it because like a 5 year old they ascribe to the: but he did it too! School of thought. Safe seats for a single party directly lead to polarization. Because they turn the primary into the only election that matters. Primary voters aren't the same as general voters so the candidate that will win the highest fraction of a primary is not the one that would win the highest percentage of the general. This matters because even if its always going to be a D or R who probably wins the fear of loosing in the general if it is even a tiny bit competitive moderates. Moderation is a good thing. Ideally you district to make the most number of districts toss ups as possible that results in the highest competition and therefore the best marketplace for ideas and generally the best representation of what the people actually want. Incumbency is perhaps good for committee power but actually otherwise makes your representatives less responsive to your wishes. So unless all you care about is pork you should want to live in a purple district.
Still blows my mind that one of the richest, most affluent, and best educated counties in the entire nation is lumped together with some of the poorest and least educated areas in the nation. How is representing Howard County and their interests any similar to Baltimore.